


At the Gate

by ljs



Category: Angel The Series
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:16:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU Angel the Series, post-"Home."</p><p><em>I had a dream, which was not all a dream.</em>--George Gordon, Lord Byron.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the Gate

Roll down the window, insert the keycard. "Go ahead, please," says the cool disembodied voice, as the gate’s arms open wide on darkness. The sign on the gate says DON’T BACK UP. TIRE DAMAGE.

Wes turns down the Chopin on his car stereo and sends his car through the gates, down into the Wolfram and Hart parking garage.

The ritual still troubles him, although he tells himself he should be used to it by now. The thing is, he couldn’t say exactly how long he and Angel Investigations have been working here – and he trips over his unconscious mental separation of himself from Gunn, Fred, and Angel.

 _Because you’re not a part of them any more, lover_ , says another disembodied voice, low, husky, female. He’s been hearing her in his dreams, feeling her in the sweat dampening his body and his sheets when he wakes at three am, heart pounding, cock hard and aching.

He doesn’t know who she is. No, she’s a dream, that’s all, he tells himself, and he turns the Chopin back up and follows the interior road down to the next level.

....................................................................

 __

 _"Chopin again for a soundtrack? You pretentious bastard," she says teasingly, just before her mouth encloses the tip of his cock, before her tongue licks across the slit._

 _"Lilah, God, *God*," he says, and one hand pushes her head down, the other hand wrapping itself in her 1200-count top sheet._

 _When she swallows then pulls off, he almost rips her hair out. But she’s laughing, hot breath itself a caress over his cock. "Lover, you must be fuck-drunk. I’m nobody’s god – or goddess. Don’t have the power. Not *that* power, anyway."_

 _Then she takes him in again, and his eyes close on a burst of light. She’s got all bloody sorts of power, he knows._

This time when he wakes, he’s sticky with his own come. It felt so real, _she_ felt so real. He knew her, if only in dreams.

This requires research, he tells himself.

.....................................................................

Roll down the window, insert the keycard. "Go ahead, please," says the disembodied voice, and the gates open on darkness.

 _You don’t know what dark is,_ says his dream’s voice. _You don’t want to know._

"I’m sorry – but who are you? Please?" he says aloud. There’s no answer. He called her Lilah in his dream, he thinks.

He drives through the gates, follows the interior road down.

........................................................................

"Have you been having any, well, odd dreams?" he asks Gunn at lunch.

"No. No dreams, man." Gunn wads up the discarded wrap from his sandwich, then throws it at a trash bin. The paper arcs in a clean line and falls in.

Gunn keeps looking, however, gazing far too long at the open mouth of the receptacle. "No dreams," he repeats quietly, and Wesley wonders if it’s meant as a prayer.

"Gunn. Charles," Wes says. "I just... well, it seems as if something’s missing."

Gunn glances at him at last. "Yeah. Yeah, I get that–"

But then Lorne comes bustling into the canteen, singing something about dangerous times, and the moment is lost. Gunn gets a call he must take. Lorne drops a file on Wes’s table as he goes by – something about a seer in Studio City repeatedly mentioning the word ‘redrum,’ which isn’t a Stephen King reference but a particularly virulent plague from a nearby dimension. Wes needs to cross-check any outbreaks.

 _Always just a little off in your timing, lover_ , the voice says.

Lilah? he thinks, and is rewarded with a disembodied, strangely happy laugh.

When he looks up, Angel is slouched against the doorjamb of the canteen, wrapped in black. For a minute his coat looks like leather, but it’s not. No.

................................................................

 _The handcuffs go around her wrists so easily -- she takes restraint like a dream._

 _"Lilah," he says, as his hand goes between her legs. "Don’t move until I say you may."_

 _"Oh, Wes, I’m a good little girl," she says with a dry-martini crack in her voice. "Always do what I’m told."_

 _That’s when he kisses her, but she’s cold to the touch,_ _he doesn’t know why_.

He wakes alone, hard, aching, sweating, and with tears on his cheeks.

..................................................................

Roll down the window, insert keycard: disembodied voice speaks, gates open on darkness, road goes down.

When Wes reaches the atrium, Fred’s tripping her way across the bars of filtered, vampire-safe sunlight which define the space. She’s got her arms full of files, and she’s chattering to Knox who trails after her. Her hair swings as she walks, it’s lovely, and for a moment Wes drowns in yearning.

The next moment he feels cold, cold as his dream, and he’s hit with a vision of flame on paper, always burning, always renewing. He tried. It meant something that he tried.

"You okay, Wesley?" Angel says from behind him.

"Yes," he says, staring at the shadows above. He is so cold.

......................................................................

Research doesn’t turn up anything regarding the prospective plague. The seer in Studio City should be interviewed, he concludes, and after a brief colloquy with Angel, he goes alone. On the drive over the hills, he plays a CD of Romantic poetry he’d found in his collection the night before – odd, of course, as he can’t remember buying it.

An RSC actor reciting Coleridge’s "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" takes him over the crest of the hill and into the Valley.

The seer, a yoga-trained, tanned young woman, smiles when she answers the door of her home. "Hi!" she says, in a voice which sounds more appropriate to an aspiring porn star, but then voice changes, smile goes. "Oh. Oh, _shit._ I shoulda known you were coming."

"I’m sorry," he says, trying to ease whatever fears she’s conceived. "I’m Wesley Wyndam-Pryce of Wolfram and Hart, and I–"

But she’s disappeared into the house, and he can’t seem to cross the threshold on his own. He waits until she comes back, with a Pomeranian yipping at her bare heels and something hidden in her fist.

"Miss," he says, "I mean no harm. I just have a few questions--"

"I bet you do, baby." Her smile is false, and her eyes... something strange is happening, he doesn’t feel rooted. The world shimmers, the dog barks. He closes his eyes for just a second.

When he opens them again, there’s something in his palm – a flat, unmarked disc. The seer is closing the door, but he can hear her saying, "Figure out what to do with _that_ , and you’ll have hella different dreams, okay?" When she throws the bolt, the sound echoes.

The disc rests on his dashboard as he crosses back over the hills. When he puts Chopin on his car stereo, the thing gleams like a dried tear on a woman’s cheek.

.............................................................

 __

 _Lilah comes so fast, so hard, that he can’t help but follow. With one last thrust he lets himself spend, lets himself feel nothing but pleasure._

 _They lie together for a few rapid heartbeats, still joined, then she playfully presses her feet into his arse. He’s almost ready to go again, impossibly._

 _But then she starts whispering in his ear about the mundanities of her day – a lunch with superiors, a trip to Studio City to meet with a seer – and he relaxes into her arms, pushes sex and darkness away._

When he wakes alone, exhausted and sweaty, he turns on the bedside lamp.

The disc gleams on his bedside table. He wonders if he knows where it might fit.

...................................................................

Roll down the window. The keycard lies on the passenger seat, but this time Wes hesitates. He looks ahead at the darkness, looks ahead at the fall.

DON’T BACK UP. TIRE DAMAGE, the sign says.

 _Do you believe in signs?_ Lilah’s voice says, laughing. _This could be a very bad idea, lover._

"Perhaps," Wes says. "But perhaps I don’t care."

He inserts the disc instead of the keycard.

Somewhere, a gate opens.


End file.
